Washington DC

Disney Tea Cups

Kennedy Space Centre

Walt Disney World

Milk in Bags

There are many iconic Canadian images. Red maple leaves, moose chasing, beaver racing or curling or playing ice hockey in a frozen pond while wearing a toque.

Another iconic Canadian image is the humble ‘bag of milk’. Yes, you read that correctly. This is not a joke. Plastic bags filled with milk and not bottles of milk. The two things seemingly do not go together. You don't see bags of juice or bags of beer do you?

Apparently bags of milk are more environmentally friendly than bottles. They use less plastic and take up less space in landfills. Even if that's true, you have to wonder what was going through the mind of the first person who decided to put a liquid into a bag. It just seems wrong. My opinion is that they were invented to stop you drinking milk straight out of the bottle, without using a glass.

Detroit Tigers v New York Yankees

Seasons of Canada

I had thought that we had come out of the snowy season. Spring has bought green leaves and new grass. But spring has other surprises.

After a week of mid 20 degree temperatures (it even reached 29 degrees once) Canada played an evil trick and gave me an icy slap to the face. As I cautiously was unzipping the three jackets I have been living in for the past couple of months I was buffeted by 103km/hr winds and even snow. Yes, snow. Again.

In northern Australia there is really only two seasons, the wet and the dry. I have decided that Canada has only two seasons as well. Winter and summer. Or in the Canadian language, good snowmobiling and bad snowmobiling season. Fall and spring don't exist in Canada. Those seasons should be renamed "early winter" and "late winter."

Loonies for the Loony

Canadians have weird names for things. They call winter hats "toques" and states "provinces." North Americans in general have a thing for naming the denominations of their coins. The one cent is a penny, the five cent is a nickel, ten cents are called dimes and the 25 cent coin is called a quarter.

But the strangest names by far are the nicknames given to Canadian currency. Canada has pretty much the same currency divisions that the U.S. has: Cents, Nickels, Dimes, Quarters and Dollars. But the most bizarre nicknames are given to the one and two dollar coins.

The Canadian dollar has a picture of a loon (a type of bird, a bit like a duck) on the back and therefore the one dollar coin in Canada is called a "Loonie".

Who names their coins "Loonies?" Canadians, that's who. And maybe Dr Suess or Disney.

Canadians love the loonie. They liked it so much that the two dollar note was also then replaced by a coin with a polar bear on it. Initially nicknames were tried such as the bearies, the bearly, the deuce and the doubloonie (a play on "double Loonie" and the former Spanish doubloon coin). A "doubloon" sounds like something pirates would search for, so the Canadians went with “toonie”.

The strangely-named money is loved by Canadians. In recent years, the loonie became associated with Canada's winning hockey teams and has been viewed as a good-luck charm in international competition.

The legend began during the 2002 Winter Olympics, when a Canadian icemaker for the ice surfaces in the ice hockey tournament, Trent Evans, buried a loonie under centre ice. Both the Canadian men's and women's hockey teams would win gold in the tournament, the men's 50 years to the day after their last gold medal victory.